multigrain cheerios >>> in the costliest presidential election in u.s. history, the 2012 race saw not $1 billion, but $2 billion spent. president obama and mitt romney each raised over a billion dollars a piece, and that's just the campaigns and party committees. the obama camp raised $1.123 billion while the romney camp spent $1.019 billion just behind them. when you add in the spending by the super pacs, those numbers go way up. we'll be right back. >>> welcome back to "hardball." here is one of the easiest predictions after any election, especially this one. the republican party would split in two. on one side you have the establishment republicans, the john boehner, mitch mcconnell wing of the party. to them the election was lost because the conservative ideologues pulled mitt romney so far to the right in the primaries he could never find his way back to the middle in november. on the other side is the right wing, jim demint, rick santorum, the talk radio conservative media industrial complex. they make the same argument ideologues always make when